Curiously, I am usually not prone to hypersensitivity, except when I am on stimulant medications. Furthermore, the character of my hypersensitivity changes depending on which drug I am on.
On Welbutrin I acquired an intense aversion to light. At first I noticed that the glare from the white house across the street was unbearably painful to look at. I started turning off lights, turning down the brightness on monitors, and waring shades whenever I left the house. Soon even cloudy days were too bright for me to tolerate. At my worst I needed to completely block out all light. Closing my eyes in a dark room wasn't even enough, I had clasp my hands over them as well, then I would feel fine, but I would be stuck like that until my senses dulled a bit.
In addition to the mere physical pain there was a more intangible sense of being overwhelmed by visual stimuli. During this period I went to book store and found myself bombarded by information. When I would turn around all of the colours and textures flying by would give me a sense of vertigo. When I opened a book the glaring white of the pages felt like a blast to my brain. The whole experience was very stressful and gave me palpitations.
On the auditory front I like to use the analogy of a mixing board. Imagine that every sound in an environment is on its own fader. Usually my brain would take foreground noises, like the person I am talking to, and turn up their volume. Meanwhile, all of the other conversations, white noise, and so on gets placed low in the mix, perhaps even completely faded out. In my hypersensitive state everything was mixed at the same volume. Environments I had previously thought of as relatively quiet were now unbearable cacophonies. Every conversation, foot step, light bulb, air duct, slamming door and scribbled notepad was right there at the foreground of my awareness. It wasn't painful, but it was taxing. Any abrupt or loud sound, however, would make me feel frightened. I was always asking my mom to speak in a quieter voice and turn down the TV at this time.
On another drug I found myself with some sensitivity to light and a pronounced pain response to loud or moderate sounds. Being a musician this was especially excruciating as I couldn't practice without earplugs.
